Top 100 Reasons Not to Bomb Iran

Tehran, Iran (ninara/CC BY 2.5)“If bombing nations made people better off and created human rights, earth would be a paradise by now”, and ninety-nine other reasons for the US and its partners not to bomb Iran…

1. There are over 80 million men, women, and children in Iran. Bombing them would be mass-murder.

2. If the U.S. government and its allies bomb Libya and Iran when their governments choose not to have nuclear weapons, you can forget about North Korea and the rest of the world choosing not to have nuclear weapons.

3. The longer the world has nuclear weapons, and the more countries that have them, the greater the likelihood of nuclear war.

4. We now know that even a small nuclear war can block out the sun, kill crops, and starve everyone on earth who survives.

5. Bombing people makes those who survive and many who care about them very angry, which is why the “war on terrorism” has predictably increased terrorism.

8. Bombing Iran risks direct war between the United States and nuclear governments including Russia.

9. If you think people want to be bombed because of shortcomings and evil deeds of their governments, you’re not actually thinking at all; you don’t want to be bombed because of the shortcomings and evil deeds of your government.

10. If bombing nations made people better off and created human rights, earth would be a paradise by now.

11. Bombing countries is illegal under the Kellogg-Briand Pact without exceptions, and regardless of whether Congress “authorizes” it. Another country bombing you would be a crime regardless of which parts of its government “authorized” it.

12. Bombing countries is illegal under the United Nations Charter with two narrow exceptions, and regardless of whether or not the U.S. Congress does or does not do anything.

13. One of those exceptions is when the U.N. Security Council “authorizes” a war. It has not done so in this case and certainly will not. And doing so wouldn’t get you around the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

14. The other exception is “defense,” but if anything is not defense it is the bombing of a far smaller country half-way around the world that has not attacked or even threatened to attack your country.

15. Attempts to provoke Iran into attacking U.S. military forces near Iran (or to disguise some U.S. forces as Iranian and have U.S. forces shoot at each other, as Vice President Dick Cheney once proposed) does not result in an Iranian attack on the actual United States or any legal ability to claim “defense.”

16. Israel is not a U.S. state.

17. The Israeli government has been threatening, provoking, and lying about Iran for decades, which are not defensive behaviors.

18. Saudi Arabia is not a U.S. state.

19. The Saudi government has been threatening, provoking, and lying about Iran for decades, which are not defensive behaviors.

20. Iraq is not a U.S. state. It is the smoldering ruin of a previous war launched on almost identical and wholly dishonest pretexts.

21. Not only waging war is a crime, but threatening war is a crime under the United Nations Charter.

22. The United States has been threatening war on Iran for decades, and any attack would follow that string of criminal actions.

23. The idea that the government of Iraq or Israel or some other nation could invite the U.S. government to wage war against Iran in and from its territory does not exist in written law and would not legitimize yet another war in the eyes of the world.

24. Gallup polling finds that in most countries out of 65 surveyed, people’s top choice as the greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States government. This needs to be countered, not exacerbated.

25. It is hard to find anyone in the United States, and even in the U.S. government, who can even name every current U.S. war, much less every minor military action the U.S. military is engaged in. This is a sign that something has spiraled out of control.